TIME in the company of Henry Rollins is always time well spent.

I've seen his spoken word shows live about four times in the last decade and the likes of Boxed Life and Think Tank were cornerstones of my impressionable youth.

He's always been so self-assured, so funny and so intense it never crossed my mind the man might have ever been anything but at the peak of his powers ALL THE TIME.

So it really was amazing to find out it turns out he was just getting warmed up all these years. His latest show, Provoked, has a structure, a message, a wisdom and a heart unlike anything I'd ever seen him do.

He's turned his hand to making documentaries in disaster areas, travelling to places in the world Americans aren't supposed to go just to see what they're like, seeing how the other half lives - and suffers - and armed with this new knowledge and causes, comes out fighting like never before. Perhaps because his energies are being put into something that's not all about him for a change? It makes a real difference.

A few years ago I took my sister to see him at Manchester Opera House and he talked for so long, one anecdote to the next, she fell asleep. For a Rollins fanatic that's just value for money, but this time, it seemed he'd really trimmed the fat to make consistant points. He never lost his stride for a moment, and if he went off on a tangent he always knew what to come back to. Rollins is always on the ball, but this was new to see.

Some people say they're not sure what Rollins does - and to an outsider, I can see the point in a way - it's not really stand up, it's not really about anything except his experiences and the cult of his personality. But for those of us who know, he is still effortlessly hilarious, and for all the contemplative moments of his show (there's certainly more than ever before) there's real comedy highlights, mostly based on some fantastic celeb anecdotes (his impressions of Jello Biafra and David Lee Roth are a joy). His memories of seeing an awful Ted Nugent concert were so funny and so passionately told the yarn nearly had me on the floor.

He is more politically motivated than ever before, which some critics have called passe. But when you understand what Rollins' opposition to the Bush administration has spurred him on to find out and achieve, how can you argue with that? Bad things happen when good people do nothing, anybody? I've adored the work of Henry Rollins for half of my entire life. And now he's 47, he has never been more inspirational, more engaging, more entertaining or more relevant. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

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